Blood & Sympathy (FFVII: Vincent x OC)

Ch64 - Solutions

She hadn't realized she had slept on her desk again until she felt that familiar pain on her back and her shoulders. Her hair fell messily on her face and she realized her forehead pressing against her forearm. Her glasses were smashed between her nose and her sleeve. The blue pen was still between the fingers of her right hand.

Jocasta didn't know what time it was when she began to stir. She just knew she was probably late for her classes, and she knew she should be expecting a lecture from the tutors for being late. Again. She lifted her face off the desk. A tear found its way down her cheek. She couldn't care any less about her being on time at the university. Another night with impending nightmares had passed. She'd learned not to scream. She didn't want to irritate her neighbors.

And then came the headache. An insistent pain that stung harshly on her forehead. She winced and her hand found her temples, massaging the pain away. She knew she wouldn't be able to get rid of it. It was a headache that she got every single morning. She knew drinking was a bad habit, but it quieted her demon's voices in her mind and allowed her to sleep for even just a little. But the nightmares were bound to follow.

Jocasta slipped her gaze on her desk trying to remember what she had been looking for last night. Ah, yes. She had constructed another serum. This time it carried another sequence of JENOVA's genome. It had taken her the entire night to grow it into genetically engineered bacteria and extract it into an ampule. She had injected herself with a needle that would allow her body to consume the liquid in that ampule. She knew it was a process that was going to take time, so she'd let that needle piercing veins of her abdomen for the entire night.

She checked on the ampule. It was empty. There wasn't much left of the greenish liquid. Her body must have absorbed it all and she just hoped that if she was to get off her chair, she wouldn't feel the pain on her stomach and the rest of her organs.

Her trembling fingers reached for her stomach, and then lower down her abdomen. She spotted the needle, pierced inside her skin below her black shirt. She pushed it out and pressed on the hole with a piece of cotton drenched in alcohol. She let out a small wince and she placed the needle with the ampule back on her desk.

An empty bottle of whiskey rested on top of her desk and she groaned. She must've consumed all of it last night. She noted to herself to pass by the store and grab some more. It was weird to think of an addiction that would normally kill her, it was actually saving her from her nightmares. Alcohol wasn't much different from him. Both love and alcohol hurt and kill. Love hurts more than those hangovers. More than the need to puke her guts out those nights that she had spent passing out by her bathroom's floor. Love was an addiction far worse than alcohol. At least, alcohol lets you know. It warns that it's capable of killing. Love is deceitful. It hides beneath deceitful beauty. What an atrocious feeling.

What a treacherous... treacherous feeling.

She didn't want it. She wasn't going to let herself embrace it ever again, because she knew that it was going to drag her down a hole again. A hole that she'd have to claw herself out and stand up alone. She didn't care about loneliness. She had been alone her entire life. But it was love that made her hate loneliness while she should be embracing it. It was love that gave her fake hopes for something better. Something that she couldn't have.

Jocasta took off her glasses and rubbed her stinging eyes. She must've been smelling horrendously bad. She knew the effects of alcohol all too well. She checked on the clock that she had on her desk. It was 11 am but, thank Holy, it was Wednesday and Wednesdays' lessons started after 12. If she was fast enough, she'd be able to make it to the University on time.